My Sisters' Place faces fraud lawsuit from ex-staffer

Dec. 21, 2012

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A former part-time residential counselor is suing a prominent White Plains domestic-violence nonprofit, saying the organization falsified records to bilk government agencies out of untold sums of money and, in one instance, shredded records after a client who was wrongfully turned away was slain.

Jacqueline Andujar filed the suit Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court in White Plains. Andujar worked at My Sisters’ Place Inc. for a decade before she was fired Oct. 26, 2011, two days before she was set to leave anyway after giving two weeks notice.

The lawsuit claims that the abuses occurred throughout Andujar’s tenure at MSP and that Helen Boylan, a “founding mother” of the nonprofit, repeatedly discouraged Andujar from raising objections to the nonprofit’s practices.

“Just do it, don’t ask any questions,” Boylan is alleged to have told Andujar at one point, before she was fired. Many of the fraud allegations involve Boylan, Andujar said.

Officials at the nonprofit dismissed the allegations in a statement, calling Andujar a “disgruntled former employee” who is “attempting to malign the reputation of our agency.” Karen Cheeks-Lomax, the organization’s executive director since 2006, declined to say whether Boylan still works at the nonprofit, and Boylan declined comment when reached by phone.

“My Sisters’ Place looks forward to having the proper authorities review the matter and we are confident of full vindication. In this season of hope and healing, we remain committed to those we serve,” read the statement, provided by Cheeks-Lomax. “The false allegations contained in the action commenced by Ms. Andujar are reprehensible and slanderous.”

The nonprofit, which was formed in 1978 and has locations in Yonkers and White Plains, receives more than 2,500 calls yearly and offers counseling, shelter, legal services and other help to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other social ills, according to its website. MSP took in $5.3 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending in June 2011, including $2.4 million in government grants and contracts, according to the nonprofit’s latest financial documents.

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Among the abuses, Andujar said, were forged signatures on resident log sheets that were turned in to the Westchester County Department of Social Services for reimbursement. A county spokeswoman declined to comment.

Other reports, filed to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, were falsified, Andujar claimed, to say that a number of clients had received legal services when they had not, apparently also to get money that the nonprofit would not have been entitled to. Further, Andujar said, MSP routinely inflated the number of callers it said used its crisis hotlines.

The most striking allegation, though, is that supervisors at MSP destroyed hotline call records after one caller, Michelle Bonner, was falsely told in 2004 that there were no vacancies at the domestic-violence shelter, and after the 30-year-old Bonner was subsequently slain by her estranged husband. Clifford Bonner was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Sept. 20, 2004, two days after he shot and killed his wife and abducted their three children, who later were found unharmed. Michelle Bonner’s half-sister, Catherine Rampersad, also was shot in the incident and later died from her injuries.

Michelle Bonner had reached out to her husband’s probation officer about two months before the shooting to report that he had threatened her with a gun, but an apparent lack of communication between agencies prevented the information from being passed on to other authorities.

Andujar’s suit claims Boylan and another MSP employee “tore the page from the log book showing there was space that day for the caller and her three children,” in an apparent attempt to protect MSP’s reputation.

“We’ve been here for years and people have tried to destroy us and they can’t,” Boylan, MSP co-founder, is alleged to have said at the time.

When Andujar complained about the alleged abuses, she met resistance from superiors, and, later, retaliation and her firing, she said. Two supervisors, identified as Boylan and Elizabeth Heslop, dismissed Andujar’s complaints that the nonprofit’s business practices were fraud, and the two sometimes also apologized for putting Andujar “in a difficult position,” according to the suit.

Another supervisor, identified as Amy Siniscalchi, the nonprofit’s current director of programs, also is named as primary antagonist of Andujar in the suit. It was Siniscalchi and others, the suit says, who harassed, humiliated and ostracized Andujar.

Just months before her firing, Andujar’s salary was cut by more than one-quarter — a “bookkeeping error,” her bosses said. In April 2011, her hours were extended. Two months later she told the organization’s top legal officer about the alleged abuses, and four months after that, on Oct. 26, 2011, she was terminated.

Andujar does not specify how much in damages she is seeking, except to say she wants two times the amount of back pay, front pay and compensatory damages from the organization, in addition to attorneys’ fees.

Timothy J. McInnis, a lawyer for Andujar, declined to comment on the suit, saying he would let it play out in the courts.